Month: June 2011

Adopting a public/private management strategy used successfully for decades by the U.S. Forest Service can ensure that endangered California state parks remain open, are properly and professionally maintained, and are available to the public for years to come.

Due to the state budget crisis, California State Parks has been forced to cut millions of dollars from its operating budgets. To make ends meet, California has proposed closing 70 state parks.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” says Warren Meyer, president of Phoenix-based Recreation Resource Management (RRM), a $10M company that manages public parks and recreation areas throughout the U.S.

“With a public-private partnership model used by the US Forest Service (USFS) for thirty years in hundreds of California parks and campgrounds, the government retains ownership of the land and control of the use and character of the park while handing over operational tasks that are time, money, and labor intensive to a more cost-effective private company.”

“While these operational tasks by no means constitute all the work required to keep parks open, they account for the vast majority of the money spent by the state parks organization in the field,” says Meyer.

“In these contracts, private concessionaires pay for all these costs solely out of the gate fees paid by the public, without further taxpayer subsidy. In addition, we pay the public agency a substantial concession fee, often converting a money-loser to a moneymaker for the government.”

In these arrangements, the public agency ensures that the private operator maintains the land in the condition and character the public expects.

“This USFS program is already working in hundreds of locations in California, and over a thousand nationwide,” states Meyer.

The fact sheet in this same release is a useful resource

How Recreation Public-Private Partnerships Work

The public retains ownership of the land. Private companies must maintain the desired character and facilities in the park. Typical concession agreements include extremely detailed operational requirements and restrictions.

The private company takes on operational tasks (from maintenance to bathroom cleaning) that consume much of the state parks budgets but don’t impinge on these strategic tasks.

Private company’s expenses, and therefore most park operations expenses, are paid out of park visitor fees without any additional payments from the state. In return for retaining these user fees, the company pays a competitively-bid rent to the state.

The state may use this rent to help cover its other expenses, or may reinvest the rent, as does the US Forest Service, in catch-up maintenance and park improvements.

Advantages for California

The substantially lower cost position of private companies allows park operations as well as major maintenance to be performed using existing visitor fees without taxpayer subsidies. Even smaller parks can benefit when bundled together into larger contracts. The result is that more parks can be kept open to the public.

More efficient management also allows for lower use fees — for example, while California State Parks typically charge as much as $30 for a campsite without utilities, at similar public campgrounds in California RRM charges no more than $18.

Private concessionaires have incentives that are well-matched to the public — they make money only if happy and satisfied visitors come back to the park. As a result, the parks operated in California by RRM receive very high marks from customers and in third-party surveys.

If the public agency wants to improve the facilities in parks, private companies can be a critical source of capital. RRM has invested more than $3 million across the country helping parks catch up with deferred maintenance and improve the visitor experience. At McArthur-Burney Falls SP in California, RRM has invested nearly $1.5 million in a new store and visitor center, new cabins, and new boat docks.

The Division of Environmental Protection is proposing to partially privatize 56 parks, including Washington Oaks Garden State Park and Faver-Dykes State Park. The proposal is being submitted to the state Acquisition and Restoration Council next Friday (June 10) as an expansion of camping and RV opportunities at those sites. But the camping and RV sites would be built and operated by private companies.

The council is an 11-member panel with representatives from five state agencies who rank the state’s environmentally sensitive land-acquisition priorities through the Florida Forever program. Florida Forever has essentially lost its funding, leaving the council to focus on its other mission: reviewing management plans for state parks and conservation lands.

Opening parks up to camping and RV sites falls under park management plans, which would have to be amended to enable the change. Those plans, called the “unit management plan,” are reworked every 10 years, with public hearings and involvement. Washington Oaks’ 10-year plan is about two years away from just such a review. DEP is asking the council to accelerate the process, though it would also make provisions for a public “meeting” at each affected park. The DEP’s proposal does not specify a formal public hearing, though that may be a matter of semantics.

“The new facilities will be designed, constructed and operated by private entities selected through the department’s procedures for soliciting and contracting state park concession services,” the DEP’ssummary proposal reads. “The Department will retain full control over all aspects of planning, design, construction and operation of the new facilities to ensure consistency with the mission and quality standards of the state park system. This system-wide expansion of camping opportunities will increase the level of public benefits state parks provide, enhance the economic benefits of state parks, create jobs, and move the state park system closer to economic self-sufficiency.”